Sarah Palin just launched a thousand points of fright at Team Romney and the Republican establishment who have been going after Newt’s relationship with Ronald Reagan, via Facebook:

We have witnessed something very disturbing this week. The Republican establishment which fought Ronald Reagan in the 1970s and which continues to fight the grassroots Tea Party movement today has adopted the tactics of the left in using the media and the politics of personal destruction to attack an opponent….

I am sadly too familiar with these tactics because they were used against the GOP ticket in 2008….

But this week a few handpicked and selectively edited comments which Newt made during his 40-year career were used to claim that Newt was somehow anti-Reagan and isn’t conservative enough to go against the accepted moderate in the primary race. (I know, it makes no sense, and the GOP establishment hopes you won’t stop and think about this nonsense. Mark Levin and others have shown the ridiculousness of this.) To add insult to injury, this “anti-Reagan” claim was made by a candidate who admitted to not even supporting or voting for Reagan. He actually was against the Reagan movement, donated to liberal candidates, and said he didn’t want to go back to the Reagan days. You can’t change history….

What we saw with this ridiculous opposition dump on Newt was nothing short of Stalin-esque re-writing of history. It was Alinsky tactics at their worst.

But this whole thing isn’t really about Newt Gingrich vs. Mitt Romney. It is about the GOP establishment vs. the Tea Party grassroots and independent Americans who are sick of the politics of personal destruction used now by both parties’ operatives with a complicit media egging it on. In fact, the establishment has been just as dismissive of Ron Paul and Rick Santorum. Newt is an imperfect vessel for Tea Party support, but in South Carolina the Tea Party chose to get behind him instead of the old guard’s choice.   In response, the GOP establishment voices denounced South Carolinian voters with the same vitriol we usually see from the left when they spew hatred at everyday Americans “bitterly clinging” to their faith and their Second Amendment rights. The Tea Party was once again told to sit down and shut up and listen to the “wisdom” of their betters. We were reminded of the litany of Tea Party endorsed candidates in 2010 that didn’t win. Well, here’s a little newsflash to the establishment: without the Tea Party there would have been no historic 2010 victory at all….

Now, I respect Governor Romney and his success. But there are serious concerns about his record and whether as a politician he consistently applied conservative principles and how this impacts the agenda moving forward. The questions need answers now. That is why this primary should not be rushed to an end.

And I question whether the GOP establishment would ever employ the same harsh tactics they used on Newt against Obama. I didn’t see it in 2008. Many of these same characters sat on their thumbs in ‘08 and let Obama escape unvetted. Oddly, they’re now using every available microscope and endoscope – along with rewriting history – in attempts to character assassinate anyone challenging their chosen one in their own party’s primary. So, one must ask, who are they really running against?

Drudge may try to control the narrative, but he doesn’t control information:

Elsewhere:

• Sad but true, when a blogger at Daily Kos makes more sense than the leading lights of the Republican Party and conservative media.
• Rick Santorum did not support an individual mandate.
• Still waiting for Jeb Bush to admonish Romney about his attacks about Reagan, ethics charge, Newt being crazy, etc., Jeb to Newt: Stop the ‘Ridiculous’ Crist Talk (h/t HotAir).
• Fake but true.
• Jonah Goldberg: ““I’ve got to say, I don’t like the way everyone thinks Newt’s desire to go back to the moon is proof of his craziness … The mockery of Gingrich over this seems more like a poor reflection on our own national spirit than on Gingrich himself.”
• Did you watch the President’s State of the Mitt Address?
• John McCain becomes Meghan McCain.
• We’re doing just fine in the world, according to Romney advisor.  (via @DanRiehl)
• Debate Tweet of the Night:

• More to follow

It is a sad commentary on the damage people have done in the name of electing Mitt Romney. Add it to the list.

“I’m going to tell you something. Newt Gingrich was the former Republican Speaker of the House, the first Republican Speaker of the House in almost half a century, and he was fighting the Democrats and to win the House of Representatives before most of the people writing on the Internet about him and trashing him and going with talking points from other campaigns were old enough to wipe themselves,” Levin said. “[W]e can certainly criticize Newt Gingrich, but do not count me among those who are going to destroy the man. I saw that attempt already by the hard-left Democrats led by [Michigan Rep.] David Bonior.” …

“I’m supposed to sit here, read all this crap on the Internet, listen to purported Reaganites and others tell me that he didn’t do these things?” Levin said. “I was there. I lived it. I saw it. Or let me put it this way — Newt Gingrich, if he does nothing else, did more for the conservative movement and to stop the liberal Democrats in the House of Representatives than virtually everybody today who’s criticizing him.”

These allegations were played out by the Romney campaign and on Drudge, and did serious damage to Newt, both substantively and by forcing Newt to get off message.

I was highly suspicious of several accounts, including that by Elliot Abrams, regarding a speech by Newt in 1986.  That article in National Review gave rise to this notorious Drudge headline:

I noted in my prior post that Abrams never provided the entire speech or a link to the speech, which made me even more suspicious.

I was in class most of this morning, and came back to hear Rush reading this post by Jeffrey Lord, Elliott Abrams Caught Misleading on Newt:

In fact, I’m sorry to say, what appears to be going on here is that Elliott Abrams, a considerably admirable public servant and a very smart guy, has been swept up in the GOP Establishment’s Romney frothings over the rise of Newt Gingrich in the Republican primaries. He is even being accused of trolling for a job in a Romney administration. No way!!!! Really????

What else can possibly explain a piece like the one Abrams penned on a day when Gingrich was being of a mysterious sudden targeted in one hit piece after another for his ties to Reagan? The pieces invariably following the Romney line that Newt had some version of nothing to do with Reagan.

A piece like the one Abrams wrote depends for its success in garnering headlines — which it did — by assuming no one will bother to get into the weeds and do the homework. Usually a safe assumption when dealing with the mainstream media, particularly a mainstream media that, as one with Establishment Republicans, hates Newt Gingrich.

Not so fast.

Due to the diligence of one Chris Scheve of a group called Aqua Terra Strategies in Washington, Mr. Abrams has been caught red-handed in lending himself to this attempted Romney hit job….

The main point is that the Newt Gingrich who spoke on the floor of the House on March 21, 1986, was thoroughly pro-Reagan, honestly engaging in a serious intellectual effort to assess the strengths and weaknesses of American foreign policy in the day from a hierarchy of vision, strategy, operations or projects and then last but not least, tactics.

In grossly misrepresenting this speech as some sort of anti-Reagan jihad, Elliott Abrams has ironically only called attention to Governor Romney’s lack of strengths and experience in this area.

I’m not done with this, I’m just tight for time right now.

I have warned you about the way Romney was running his campaign, and now that one of his operatives has been caught lying about Reagan and the heroes of the Reagan revolution in order to elect someone who was anti-Reagan and anti-conservative when we needed support most, I’m not letting it go.

Update:

Prior posts:

• Shock, video of Newt bashing Reagan misleadingly edited
• Drudge versus history
• Nancy Reagan 1995: Ronnie turned that torch over to Newt

• Both Hong Kong and Singapore are beautiful. Their size and wealth are testaments to the power of freedom. Sixty years ago, they were shadows of the cities they are today: HK’s GDP per capita was something like 20% of the UK’s and Singapore was still a manufacturing economy. In a short period of time, they’ve grown to compete with the businesses and industries that Western cities have historically cornered. This has brought implants from all over the world to their shores. There must be hundreds and thousands of people for whom these cities have meant a new lease on life or a new opportunity to thrive. This is something you can see in the diversity of faces and neighborhoods that each city offers and it strikes me as more awe-inspiring than any boulevard, painting or building I’ve ever seen. I’m happy it lives.
• Both cities are clean. Really clean. Everyone seems to take pride in their space, which makes even the poorest regions pleasant to walk around. I always teased one of my Singaporean friends for scrubbing her cleats after each golf practice. Now I wonder why she didn’t do it after every shot…
• Singapore still has a long way to go before it could be considered fully developed. That is, I assumed it would be more dense. There are a lot of underdeveloped areas right near the city center. I think I’ll consider this an opportunity.

I hope everyone had a great holiday season.

While some of Newt’s space ideas (they’re just ideas, not proposals) are grandiose in the way we always have dreamed of space, his proposals for private industry incentives and the desire not to cede space to China and Russia regularly are mocked and lambasted as crazy, or in Mitt’s word, “zany.”

Dan McLaughlin has an ironic tweet making the point about the hypocrisy of the punditry:

Here a quote from one of the links, The Lunacy of Our Retreat from Space:

But look up from your BlackBerry one night. That is the moon. On it are exactly 12 sets of human footprints — untouched, unchanged, abandoned. For the first time in history, the moon is not just a mystery and a muse, but a nightly rebuke. A vigorous young president once summoned us to this new frontier, calling the voyage “the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.”

And so we did it. We came. We saw. Then we retreated.

How could we?

Before you click on the link, which of Newt’s harshest critics do you think said that?

Managing our decline, or inspiring the nation.  Just one of the choices for Florida voters next Tuesday.

If the polls are correct, Florida will choose managed decline.

As Jeffrey Anderson writes, Romney’s defense of Romneycare will be political death in the general election:

Romney then replied by issuing a defense of Romneycare that sounded a lot like the defense that Obama (who might have even been taking notes) is likely to give of Obamacare: “I didn’t say I’m in favor of top-down government-run health care. Ninety-two percent of the people in my state had insurance before our plan went in place.” (For Obamacare, it’s nearly the same percentage of people, only nationwide) “And nothing changes for them. They own the same private insurance they had before.” (As Obama likes to say, “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.”) “And for the 8 percent of people who didn’t have insurance, we said to them, if you can afford insurance, buy it yourself, any one of the plans out there, you can choose any plan.” (The same is true for Obamacare — except, as in Romneycare, for the large numbers of people who get shuttled onto Medicaid.) “There’s no government plan.” (There isn’t one in Obamacare either, as the public outcry caused the “public option” to be nixed.) ….

So if Republicans are going to have a mandate to repeal [Obamacare's] unprecedented threat to liberty and fiscal solvency, they will have to bring it up — or, rather, their nominee will have to bring it up. And he will have to know why he opposes it — not merely that he does.

There was a time when the loudest mouths in the Republican party recognized the disastrous reality of Romney’s refusal to walk away from Romneycare.  But that was then:

The Romney team expects that the distinction between a state individual mandate and a national one will be good enough to get through a primary against lesser-known opponents. He’ll just talk about other things, the reasoning goes, even though opposition to ObamaCare and the growth of the federal government has been the driving force behind the conservative movement for a couple of years. Most Republicans I speak with think Romney’s problem is insoluble. But a smart Republican insider cautioned me yesterday, “In a divided field you just never know.” I suppose. But still.

This is now, and we deserve to be angry.

I can’t remember if this one had crossed your desk before.

The electorate had better be awake and act this 2012 election season.

The second half of the debate was much more sedate.  I’m not sure there were any highlights, except for Romney deferring to Newt on Reagan and Newt getting to solidify his Reagan narrative.  Given how quickly Romney folded on the issue, this has to help Newt as Romney’s campaign and supporters continue their attacks on Newt’s Reagan connection.  Newt was able to drive this home in his closing — a big election with big choices, paycheck over foodstamps, etc.

If Newt needed a big moment, he didn’t get it.  Romney was strong in the start, weaker as the night went on.  Ron Paul was good throughout.  I’d declare Santorum the winner, but I don’t think he’ll take votes from Newt or Romney.

At the third break:

On Reagan, Newt mentioned the video I ran of Nancy Reagan praising him! (but didn’t mention me).  Lashed out at Romney coordinated attack.  Newt gave a good history of his involvment, and Romney didn’t push it.  Best part of night for Newt.  Some on twitter say he should have gone after Romney harder on Reagan, but I’m not sure that would have helped rather than make him seem mean.

Rest of segment was ho hum.

At the second break:

Some back and forth between Newt and Blitzer over taxes, then Romney got involved on tax issue, giving another one of his speeches about hard work etc.  On surface Romney got the better of it, just not sure how it ultimately plays out.   Particularly when Newt suggested truce on personal attacks and Romney basically said no, in a round about way.

Discussion of space program pretty good for Newt in Florida, Romney basically threw cold water on it.  Santorum was supportive of exploring space, but against new programs and big ideas.  Basically all three then went after Newt on the issue.

Santorum went after Romney on Romneycare and Newt on mandate pretty hard, but mostly Romney, “we can’t give this issue away.”  Romney came across very poorly, said to Santorum (who was animated) “it’s not worth getting angry about” – crowd booed.  Up until this point Romney was doing well.  Santorum went after him harder “your mandate is no different than Barack Obama’s mandate.”

Strong segment for Santorum and, yes, Paul.

At the first break:

A lot of discussion of immigration, back and forth between Newt and Romney, they each hit some singles, no extra bases.

Romney denied knowledge of running an ad saying Gingrich referred to Spanish as the language of the ghetto.  Here’s the ad, right on his campaign website.  Blitzer then hammered Romney by pointing out it’s his ad and at end he says he approved it.  Good moment for Newt.

On Freddie, Romney got the better of the exchange.  Freddie is a topic which just never works well for Newt.

Santorum had a pretty good presence, scored probably moment of night so far saying nothing wrong with what Newt did or Mitt did, and they should stop with “petty personal attacks.”  Coming right after Romney scoring points on Newt about Freddie, it actuallly was a good save of Newt.

Before the start

First, listen to Mark Levin about the attacks on Newt.  He says just about everything I wanted to say, but better.  We are living in terrible times when a pretender to the conservativve throne is being crowned.  “If this is what the conservative movement has become, then count me out.”  Amen.

And then another voice of sanity:

Sarah Palin attacked Newt Gingrich’s detractors in an interview set to air tonight. “Look at Newt Gingrich, what’s going on with him, via the establishment’s attacks,” she told Fox Business Network. “They’re trying to crucify this man and rewrite history, and rewrite what it is that he has stood for all these years.”

In 2008, the Republican insiders had someplace else to go (McCain), but they don’t this time, so the wounds will not be healed, even with the prospect of 4 more years of Obama.

Someone is going rogue, as this series of tweets (read bottom to top) based on this Politico article indicates:

In the meantime, Romney’s strategy has lifted him in the most recent polling to a substantial single digit lead:

• And We Should Hate Newt Gingrich for This? ”All the members of the Republican Party who have been complicit and collaborative in the destruction of our nation in the past few decades always talking about smaller government while never fighting against the tide of creeping socialism have now come out against Newt Gingrich.”
• If It Ain’t Brokered, Don’t Fix It!  Part of the problem is that it feels like Romney 2012 is trying to pull off a rerun of the Obama 2008 campaign, running as a largely blank slate, letting voters of diverse ideological stripes project their desires and preferences onto him…. I’ve laid out my gripes with Newt. But Romney is making that divided convention, party-elders-look-for-a-unifying-candidate scenario look better and better each day.”
• Florida primary pits tea party vs. cocktail party:  “Exit poll data and unmistakable anecdotal evidence from their events reflects an unfolding campaign in which Romney does best  with voters that are a lot like him — wealthy, well-educated and lukewarm about the populist tea party movement. Gingrich is appealing most to Republicans who earn under six figures, make up the core of the middle-class and are worried about their economic prospects and furious at the establishment.”
• And Tweet of the Day:

• More
• No surprise, in early 1990s Romney donated to Dems while running away from Reagan.
• Mark Levin: ““Newt Gingrich, if he does nothing else, did more for the conservative movement and to stop the liberal Democrats in the House of Representatives than virtually everybody today who is criticizing him!” You must listen to the whole thing, shame on Romney and his attack dogs.

Dan Riehl has the details and the more complete video:

There’s a short excerpt of a 1988 C-SPAN video purportedly showing Newt Gingrich bashing Reagan when talking about how Bush, Sr. should run. As I suspected, it’s edited to give a false impression. What you don’t see is immediately after when Gingrich praises Reaganism and the Reagan platform. If you can’t watch it all, it begins at about 2:30 in to confirm it’s the same segment. It’s the minute or two afterward you also need to hear to understand that Newt wasn’t bashing Reagan at all.

He was merely saying, Bush isn’t Reagan and the GOP needs something new to sell. He even points out the Reagan landslide, saying Reagan’s platform won 48, or whatever states and was inclusive.

Yet Mitt Romney, not his SuperPAC but his own campaign, just started running an advertisement in Florida claiming otherwise.

How much more deceptive could the ad be?  The ad features prominently a comment from Pelosi about information so secret she kept it from her husband, but the barely visible citation is to a comment by Pelosi from 1997.

Update:  The ad is even more misleading than I thought.  Via Tip Line, here’s the link to the original 1997 article, and the reference to something “so secret” had nothing to do with leaking information about Newt, merely the congressional inquiry itself:

In a lengthy interview with The Chronicle, Pelosi provided an  inside look at  the controversial investigation into Gingrich — an  inquiry so secret that she  once had to ask her husband to leave the  bedroom at 3 a.m. so she could  privately conduct business on the  phone.

So it’s lie upon lie.

Via James Pethokoukis:

It’s one thing when Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum say Romneycare was the inspiration for Obamacare. Such charges can be written off or minimized as political exaggeration. But how about when an academic study in Health Affairs, a peer-reviewed, health policy journal, says it. The publication just published an analysis of Mitt Romney’s health reform in Massachusetts. And as least for political pundits, this is the big takeaway (bold for emphasis):

Just as Massachusetts’s 2006 health reform legislation provided the template for the Affordable Care Act, so the state’s experience under that legislation provides an example of the potential gains under federal health reform.

Indeed, the whole point of the study is to try and forecast the impact of Obamacare by looking at Romneycare. Don’t be surprised if the research, conducted by professors from the University of Minnesota and Harvard, gets a mention at tonight’s GOP debate.

Tell me this is not happening.  How did we get here?

Update:  James Antle, III:

Obamacare and Romneycare are so tightly linked that not even a polemicist as gifted and persuasive as Coulter can separate them.

Michelle Malkin, Confirmed: Romneycare = Obamacare

Politico’s homepage top headline is The right drops a bomb on Newt featuring photos of Ann Coulter, Tom DeLay, Elliot Abrams and Matt Drudge.

Just like in December, the rise of Newt has caused panic in Republican circles.

In December the charge was led by National Review, and now it’s being led by Matt Drudge, as reflected in this image from Marooned in Marin:

For several days Drudge has been running almost around-the-clock negative banners against Newt, hyping negatives and burying news which contradicts the Romney campaign narrative that Newt was anti-Reagan.

Against the anti-Newt crusade stands a wealth of counter-viewpoints of people who were in a position to know and who share very differenct recollections of Newt and Reagan, via Josh Painter in the comments:

Reagan Nat’l Security Advisor Bud McFarlane: http://bit.ly/zd9eAF

Reagan Economist Art Laffer: http://bit.ly/xEDETi

Reagan WH political director Jeffrey Lord: http://bit.ly/zw2ZMb

Reagan Policy Analyst Peter Ferrara http://bit.ly/zq1QxI

Reagan media consultant Richard Quinn: http://on.msnbc.com/y2sPM2

Reagan’s Speechwriting Dir. Bently Elliott: http://thedc.com/xOkDvA

Reagan’s older son Michael Reagan: http://bit.ly/yYVy7L

Reagan’s beloved wife Nancy: http://bit.ly/zrWvAw

I’ll add to that Peter Robinson, former Reagan speechwriter, who wrote the historic Berlin Wall address in which President Reagan urged Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall!”:

Newt shared the frustrations of many conservatives, including, from time to time, me, that the President permitted the bureaucracy to prove persistently feckless, undermining his program–as you’ll recall if you’re of a certain age, conservatives were always insisting that the President’s staff should “let Reagan be Reagan.”  If Newt mouthed off, giving vent to these frustrations, so be it.  He was in Congress.  That was, in a sense, his job.  And at one time or another, every conservative of any standing felt exasperated or worried–and urged the President not to go soft either on Communism or on our own bureaucracy.  Newt’s comments here place him in the company of William F. Buckley, Jr.–WFB vented his frustrations more artfully, but he vented them–and I’d have thought that for our friends at NR that would be quite good enough.

Drudge has 30 million visits a day on his side.  We have history on our side.  Make it known.

Update:  David Kenner of Foreign Policy magazine:

The latest iteration comes from Elliott Abrams writing in National Review, quoting pieces of a single speech Newt apparently gave on the floor of the House on March 21, 1986, in which Newt criticized certain foreign policy decisions of the Reagan administration. Abrams does not link to the full speech or to other speeches of Newt at the time.

Instead much of the anti-Newt conservative media — including a screaming Drudge banner — accuses Newt of “insulting” Reagan.  It is part of a smear campaign which started when Newt surged in Iowa and National Review unloaded with it’s infamous “Marvin the Maritan” issue, and now it has resurfaced once again now that Romney is in electoral trouble.

A more honest assessment comes from Jeffrey Lord at The American Spectator.  Lord, who was in a position to know because he witnessed first hand Newt’s interaction with Reagan, has written a critical column, Reagan’s Young Lieutenant,  Much like Byron York’s column debunking Romney attacks regarding Newt’s ethics charges, Lord’s column is a critical contribution to the truth in a sea of shameless lies.

Lord portrays Newt in a much more favorable light:

Newt Gingrich was part of the Reagan Revolution’s Murderers’ Row. And anybody who was in Washington in the day, much less in the Reagan White House or the 1984 Reagan re-election campaign (and I would make that particular cut of three), knew it….

…. time after time after time in the Reagan years, a number of those times which I had the opportunity to see up close as a young Reagan staffer charged in my duties with being the White House liaison to Gingrich and Kemp’s Conservative Opportunity Society, Newt Gingrich was out there again and again and again for Ronald Reagan and conservative principles. In his own memoirs, The Politics of Diplomacy, James Baker noted of his days as Reagan White House Chief of Staff that he always “worked closely” with the people Baker described as “congressional leaders.” And who were those leaders? Baker runs off a string of names of the older leaders of both House and Senate in the formal positions of power — plus one. That’s right: young Newt Gingrich….

…..But whatever happens, quite unlike the picture Romney is trying to paint of his prime opponent in South Carolina, Newt Gingrich was very much present and accounted for on the Reagan team. To borrow from Reagan’s farewell address to the nation and the men and women who served him, Newt Gingrich wasn’t just marking time. He made a difference. He helped make that City on a Shining Hill stronger. He helped make the City freer.

Quite to the contrary of the Romney message, Newt Gingrich was in fact one of Reagan’s Young Lieutenants.

One of the best.

At the 1995 Goldwater Institute Dinner honoring President Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich was the keynote speaker. Nancy Reagan gave a short speech on behalf of herself and President Reagan, in which she both spoke warmly of Newt and recognized Newt at the heir to the Goldwater and Reagan legacies:

The dramatic movement of 1995 is an outgrowth of a much earlier crusade that goes back half a century.  Barry Goldwater handed the torch to Ronnie, and in turn Ronnie turned that torch over to Newt and the Republican members of Congress to keep that dream alive.

Nancy Reagan had it right, as does Jeffrey Lord.  Newt was part of the Reagan revolution and he was the heir to that legacy, not alone, but as someone to whom the torch had been passed.

That torch never was passed to Mitt Romney, and if it had been, he would have rejected it:

The promotion of Romney’s presidential aspirations has forced much of the conservative media to conflate capitalism and free markets with the Bain business model, a position we will live to regret.

So too, in order to promote someone who never was part of the Reagan revolution and opposed the conservative agenda of the 1990s, we are willing to reinvent and distort the history of conservatism.

We deserve what we get.

Updates:

• Drudge versus history
• Mitt Romney’s shameless use of Nancy Pelosi
• Shock, video of Newt bashing Reagan misleadingly edited

(Added) At the debate Thursday night, Romney completely backed away from the attack on Newt’s connection with Reagan, implicitly admitting that the attacks on Newt were without basis: